Space X’s Falcon Heavy rocket is now scheduled to test launch at 3:45 PM EST. The Falcon Heavy is three Falcon 9 rockets bundled together in a new configuration from the regular Falcon 9s. The main rocket has a payload attached with two Falcon 9s as boosters. The Falcon heavy has 27 engines and generates more than 5 million pounds of thrust at lift off.

Musk has given it just a 50% chance of actually lifting off for its test flight without blowing up.

“On Twitter, a network of Trump supporters consumes the largest volume of junk news, and junk news is the largest proportion of news links they share,” the researchers concluded. On Facebook, the skew was even greater. There, “extreme hard right pages – distinct from Republican pages – share more junk news than all the other audiences put together.”

Looks a bit cloudy to the east, but I’ll go outside and see if I can get some pictures. I’m on the opposite side of the state, but we can see launches from the yard sometimes, and it’s pretty cool — particularly at night!

Giant, deadly waves are not headed for the coast of Maine. Or South Carolina. Or Massachusetts. Or New York. But if you happen to live in any of those places and checked your phone earlier, you might have been concerned; a false push notification was sent out to East Coast residents on Tuesday morning.

Just amazing! So glad I saw that, wish my mom had. I have tears of joy, just joy. Perhaps we are going to see some space stuff pick back up before we die. I vaguely remember the space program excitement in the mid-late 70’s (I was very young but living in Texas and spending many weekends at the Johnson Space Flight Center near Houston) and it was certainly still present with the early years of the shuttle, but seems to have faded. SpaceX and soon, Blue Origin and Virgin Galatic, are going to be pushing lots of exciting things. In this area, I welcome the dreams and drive of billionaires. We need to get off this rock!

The Mars mission calls for the Big Falcon Rocket design, capable of putting 150 tons into low earth orbit, 250 tons with the expendable version. That sounds about right for a Mars mission. Anything larger than that, and you’re looking at a seaborne launch platform. Too big and dangerous to launch from the Cape.

@Yutsano: as Elon Musk wants and plans to go to Mass and colonize it, I expect there are some experiments onboard the Tesla that will radio back status updates on things like batteries, materials, alloys, etc. When the next one launches and there’s some extra room, I expect he’ll put some kind of rover or lander or something to get onto Mars if the timing and physics allow, of course. Or perhaps just an orbiter.

@Yutsano:
Yeah, it’s a travesty we have to rely on our enemies to ferry us into space. The Russians have been using their Soyuz spacecraft as a space taxi for decades. The Apollo CSM could have served the same function.

Perhaps we are going to see some space stuff pick back up before we die.

I hope so. It’s funny, last night at dinner I showed my husband Charlie Pierce’s tweet about how he’s “watching a video from Mars on a computer in my hand” and we were reminiscing about how amazing it felt – still feels! – when we were kids and saw film of men walking on the moon. (Our 14-year-old son was kind enough to not roll his eyes at the olds.) I remember going outside on a hot summer night in Connecticut in 1969, looking up at the moon, and being astounded thinking that there were people up there, right that minute. We need that sense of wonder and amazement not just to drive more scientific and engineering progress but to connect with our fellow humans and find common purpose.

@Alain the site fixer: I’ve mentioned before, but in the mid 60’s we used to hear a loud roar and the windows would rattle for about 30 seconds or so out where I grew up on a pretty regular basis. We lived about 15 miles west of where they tested the engines for the Saturn-V.

ETA: Part of my adventure on Sunday was a hike about a mile from where they did those tests. I couldn’t see where they did the tests, it was behind a ridge from where I was hiking.

@Alain the site fixer: Oh there’s no doubt the Tesla isn’t up there just for shits and giggles, although I’m certain there’s some component of that up there. But even just the act of putting tons of steel outside the gravity well teaches us if we’re doing things right or just lucky this one time. But yeah all the toys playing around in the car have to be teaching us stuff too.

@🌎 🇺🇸 Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) 🗳 🌷: The boosters came down on land at KSC (beautiful side-by-side simultaneous touchdowns), the center core was supposed to land on a droneship at sea. SpaceX hasn’t said anything about the fate of the center core yet, though we saw it descend almost all the way to landing. (I think they generally don’t count their chickens until the stage has been bolted down on the droneship by the recovery crew.)

A UK warrant to arrest Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is still valid, a court has ruled. The warrant was issued in 2012 after Mr Assange failed to answer bail over sex assault claims in Sweden, now dropped.

Lawyers for Mr Assange, who has been living in London’s Ecuador embassy since then, argued the warrant had therefore “lost its purpose”.

His lawyers went on to argue against it on other grounds and the court will rule on 13 February. At Westminster Magistrates’ Court, senior district judge and chief magistrate Emma Arbuthnot said, having considered the arguments, she was “not persuaded that the warrant should be withdrawn”. She told the court that not surrendering to bail was a stand-alone offence under the Bail Act and Mr Assange must explain why he had failed to do so.

@trollhattan: Who knows. The Ecuadorian embassy is sovereign territory. The Metropolitan Police only get access if invited in. So whatever has happened, Ecuador doesn’t want to be any more involved than they have to be.

On the other, it is fucking embarrassing that the payload is Musk’s car. Really? What a joke.

It’s a remarkable sign, actually. It means that the cost of the launch is so much below the cost of payloads that nobody was willing to risk their payload on an unproven rocket. If they can hit that $90M/launch cost, that opens up a lot of opportunities.

But the real innovation here tends to not really get reported on. The reason space launches are uncommon is that it takes a long fucking time to build a rocket and then we throw it away, and nobody wants to spend hundreds of millions to expand production capacity. In short, we build rockets to order. SpaceX has changed that model. If they can build 6 per year then they can handle 6*n launches per year where n is the number of reflights each rocket can do, assuming that they retire 6 each year as well. If they can get 10 launches out of their block 5 rockets due out this year, they can launch one a week while not keeping any in service for more than a year.

In short, because of their ability to reuse rockets, SpaceX can *quickly* bypass ever other launch provider combined in terms of total launches, and that’s a big part of why they can undercut on price. It’s really remarkable what they’ve done here. The entire rest of the industry should be ashamed after watching what happened today.

@trollhattan:
Are you kidding? Russia is trying to the bestest of friends with Ecuador. Assange is going to die an old man, I’m afraid. Real life doesn’t have a narrative where evil people get their comeuppance.

Off topic, but encouraging: I just saw an ad in the local advertising weekly for a butcher shop in the western, more rural part of Cumberland County, PA (Adam: Newville area). In addition to “our own farm-raised local beef,” it says “halal butcher available” and “we offer lamb and goat.” This, and the “Eastern European foods” section of the local supermarket, suggests to me that the many Bosnian families in the area are becoming absorbed into the fabric of the community like all of the immigrant families before them.

@RobertDSC-iPhone 6: It’s a rich-asshole-showoff thing, but there was never going to be a real payload risked on this particular flight–it was that or some inert boilerplate spacecraft. It’s a test flight.

@🌷 Martin:
I’ll just add that synching twenty-seven engines was a tall mountain to climb and they got it right the first goddamn time. Mind=boggled. The approach somewhat echoes using computer arrays in parallel instead of lone supercomputers. Savings and reliability advances with time should be obvious.

@🌎 🇺🇸 Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) 🗳 🌷: Yes, but it was a chimera, the Shuttle never actually was cheap to fly. Too much politically motivated mission creep, and launching all your satellites with a crewed spacecraft turns out to be a terrible idea.

The thing that strikes me, though, is that the impact of this on actual space activity may be smaller than meets the eye just because the cost of spaceflight was dominated by cost of payload already. The demand elasticity for space launch is pretty low, and it may be that there’s no nonlinear realm of cheapness you get into where it suddenly gets way higher, like space fans imagine.

@TenguPhule: In the early stages they imagined the system as fully reusable with a crewed, winged flyback booster that would land on a runway, and the orbiter as the second stage. (Among many other designs. There was a really weird proposal from Chrysler that in hindsight looks almost like somebody’s 1960s attempt to imagine the SpaceX system.)

It was totally amazing from start to finish. And not like a B&W fiction movie, more like we are in the space age again. Especially the landings. Well, the blast off was pretty good. My phone line is dead, no dial tone. Frontier. Will be contacting them online via sat connection next thing.

The launch/landing made me shed a few tears. So many people, so much work, had a tiny glass of bourbon in memory of the test pilots, astronauts and cosmonauts who have died to get us where we are today.

This guy approached me on the metro and asked if I was American, if I spoke English. I replied yes and ignored him. When waiting outside he approaches me again and asks where my genetics are from, if I’m from Korea. I ask him why do you wanna know and this happened.

@Heidi Mom: I know where that is. Not sure I’ve ever been in it. I think it may partially be your suggestion, but also they’ve realized that there are approximately 30 or so Muslim International Fellows – officers from allied and partner nations – who are students at USAWC every year. A significant number of them bring their families with them, so that’s a lot of demand for Halal meat right there. Since they’re a 20 minute or so drive from USAWC, that would be a good market to tap.

Ideally you want cargoes that would not only stay up long term, but serve as building blocks to start building more stuff up there. Establish a basic manufacturing setup up there and a lot more opportunities open up for increased activity as costs would decrease since more of it wouldn’t be fighting gravity to get where its needed.

So increased activity in the short run, but long term more of a passenger service going up.

@rikyrah: @Mnemosyne: It is supposed to be the office to do the “extreme” vetting on potential immigrants. If I understand what happened today, all he did was sign a memorandum stating the formal intent to establish one. It would have to be approved and funded by Congress. So it is doubtful this is anything other than a photo op they scheduled for him as a feel good, he’s doing something to stop all those evil foreigners from coming and killing us all in our sleep event. He’ll brag about it in his next interview with the media or unscripted press gaggle or his next rally/appearance.

@🌎 🇺🇸 Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) 🗳 🌷: Besides the part where SpaceX now has the heaviest operational booster in the world and the second or third heaviest in history (depending on whether you count the N-1)? And did it for 90 million?

@Mnemosyne: Have you all considered stand your ground laws? And constitutional open carry? I’ve been told that this makes everyone much, much more polite. I’ve never actually seen anyone being much, much more polite in reality, but I’m assured, usually with a reference to Heinlein, that this is the case.

@Matt McIrvin: Well, that’s one aspect I’m trying to understand. The payloads themselves will still be costly, and the barrier to entry for companies that want SpaceX services still seems to be high.
So the carrier fee may lower or become more manageable, but then what?

@Mike in DC: The President’s proposal is never going to pass. My best estimate of what I think is going to happen is 1) There will be no major revisions to immigration. Whatever reasonable revisions the Senate might pass is DOA in the House because of the Hastert Rule. 2) Because of the Hastert Rule and Speaker Ryan’s unwillingness to do anything unless/until the President endorses it in the House, no minor revisions, such as just a DACA fix and increased money for border security, will also not pass. 3) Because of who is advising the President (Miller and Kelly), even if a reasonable set of major or minor revisions to immigration cleared Congress, it would be vetoed. They’ve made it clear, it is the 4 Pillars plan or nothing. 4) No matter what the Senate Democrats try to do, it is unlikely there will be a DACA fix. They will continue to fight, but at the end of the day they just don’t have the leverage given the way the Senate rules are set up and the Senate functions.

Are you kidding? Russia is trying to the bestest of friends with Ecuador. Assange is going to die an old man, I’m afraid. Real life doesn’t have a narrative where evil people get their comeuppance.

@🌎 🇺🇸 Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) 🗳 🌷: True, but that idea goes out the window when said “evil people” decide to hang out with and take money and favors from violent criminals with a very, very long track record of open murder.

I don’t know when, but at some point Assange is going to die from transcortical lead poisoning at the hands of his Russian friends. And I won’t be rejoicing. The open slaughter of people, innocent or guilty, by Russia in other nations (especially Britain) needs to just stop.

It is supposed to be the office to do the “extreme” vetting on potential immigrants. If I understand what happened today, all he did was sign a memorandum stating the formal intent to establish one. It would have to be approved and funded by Congress. So it is doubtful this is anything other than a photo op they scheduled for him as a feel good, he’s doing something to stop all those evil foreigners from coming and killing us all in our sleep event.

Except that ICE keeps taking actions that harm and humiliate people. Photo-ops aside, people need to pay attention to what the Trump administration does with respect to immigration enforcement, not just presidential utterances.

Also we have to push back against Trump’s attempt to normalize racism. I hear pundits and some ordinary people start to nod and agree that “merit based” immigration is a good approach.

@Corner Stone:
Cost is a thing but only one thing–the other being instantly doubling the current maximum launch lift capacity and raising the upper bound design limit similarly. NSA, for one, is thrilled.

Senate leaders are close to a two-year budget deal that would avert a government shutdown, Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) announced Tuesday.

The deal would set spending levels for fiscal 2018 and 2019 and avoid the prospect of a government shutdown when a stopgap spending measure expires on Thursday.

“There are still some outstanding issues to be resolved, but we are closer to an agreement than we have ever been,” Schumer announced on the Senate floor.

He met with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in McConnell’s office Tuesday morning and an aide familiar with the meeting said both leaders were pleased with the progress made.

McConnell late told reporters that he had a “good meeting” with Schumer.

“I’m optimistic that very soon we’ll be able to reach an agreement,” he said.

The current plan is for the Senate to vote on a stand-alone, yearlong defense appropriations bill either Tuesday or Wednesday.

That vote is expected to fail.

The vote is intended to demonstrate that a six-week spending measure expected from the House that would fund military programs for a full year does not have enough votes to pass the Senate, according to a senior Senate aide familiar with internal deliberations.

If Democrats block a stand-alone defense spending bill, showing that the House stopgap can’t pass the Senate, McConnell could amend the House resolution to include whatever deal he and Schumer work out in the next 24 hours.

If Senate leaders fail to finalize the deal within the next day, McConnell could amend the House resolution with a fallback option to keep federal agencies open.

Either way, leaders don’t expect another shutdown this week.

“There’s no appetite for continuing that type of approach. I sincerely hope I never face that again,” said Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.).

A Senate Democratic aide said an immigration debate could begin on the Senate floor as soon as this week after the government funding resolution passes.

McConnell has yet to announce the component details of the base immigration bill that lawmakers will work off of.

Votes on amendments to that legislation are expected to take place next week.

If they can really pass a 2 year budget deal in 2 days, then Immigration isn’t impossible either.

Donnie will declare it the Biggest Bestest Deal in history and go have some ice cream. He doesn’t care about policy, he cares about “winning”. An immigration deal would distract all the MAGA-types from the stock market falling back to earth and such – I think he’d take it.

@Adam L Silverman: Very true. It’s my understanding that it was the Muslim fellows’ desire for a nearby mosque that led to the establishment of the Islamic Peace Centre off Cavalry Road. The Bosnian community has recently established a mosque on Simpson Ferry Road in Mechanicsburg. For what it’s worth, I live in the Pheasant Run apartment complex (just to the west of the supermarket and the Peace Centre), and there are quite a few Bosnian families here (and occasionally people from the AWC). The woman in the adjoining apartment, in fact, came here at least 10 years ago with her two daughters, both of whom have since married and had children. Because of the awful precipitating events that led to the Bosnian emigration, it sounds callous to say “it’s good they came when they did,” but I’m sure the current occupant of the White House would not be thrilled to be admit them today. Sad! They’ve followed what is undoubtedly the usual pattern: the old folks will smile and say hello in response to a greeting, but they don’t speak English; our neighbor (45-50?) speaks enough English to make herself understood; her daughters are fluent in English, with an accent that’s barely detectable, if at all; and their kids, I’m sure, will have no accent at all.

@trollhattan: Do satellites as an entity also get cheaper due to more frequent launch windows or some mix of Moore’s Law, et al ?
Or if your main customer is Nancy’s Super Awareness does the cost of the payload not matter that much? The ability to replace older technology with constantly improved designs makes life better?

@Mike in DC: Ahem. The BFR’s full name is not “Big Falcon Rocket”. It’s a big Biden deal, ie Big Fucking Rocket. Those guys n gals at spaceX have a sense of humor, in addition to world-beating engineering chops.

George Papadopoulos' fiancee, @simonamangiante, is in the middle of a tweet/retweet storm of stories about how Papadopoulos played a high-level role on the campaign and never did anything without permission.

NASA could take a lesson in the production of this event. The cheering, the cameras, the lead-up. The less than dead-voiced alacrity of the launch voiceover folk …
I teared up; as the era of manned interplanetary exploration has truly begun with, not a bang, but a rumble!

@Corner Stone: sort of. Year after year, components get smaller, more powerful, and more energy efficient. So what took up 2 cubic feet ten years ago needs a phone sized area. So capability-wise, they get cheaper but still cost many many millions. Of course if your budget is 100 million and the cost to launch is only 50 as opposed to 75, that gives you more room for state of the art, and expensive, upgrades.

@Another Scott: You’re misreading this. This is an internal plan to jam the House. My take is that Ryan wants this to happen as he can’t hold his caucus together for anything reasonable. Getting this done does not mean getting anything on immigration through will happen. Immigration has been a bridge too far in the House of Representatives since the Bush 43 Administration. The House GOP caucus has only gotten worse since then

@Brachiator: Depending on what happens with the current Federal court order staying the withdrawal of the DACA EO, most likely. My understanding from reporting is they scarfed up one yesterday. Which puts ICE and DHS in open opposition to a Federal District Court ruling.

@Another Scott: Schumer better be trolling the GOP on this. Passing any kind of actual budget the Republicans find tolerable is a surefire recipe to tank the 2018 elections. Remember, we’re supposed to be working AGAINST these Nazi fuckers. Not enabling them.

@Corner Stone:
Micro satellites launched in virtual clouds are already dramatically dropping the total price of attaining orbit so I suppose yes, although the Heavy will doubtless be reserved for more ambitious pursuits. The forthcoming Webb Telescope had to be a folded design to fit existing launchers. Future projects will not be so-constrained, e.g., the next generation of Mars robots.

@🌎 🇺🇸 Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) 🗳 🌷: The only thing that will stop ICE, CBP, and DHS on these matters is 1) a change in congressional majorities, allowing the Democrats to rein them in via proper oversight and control over their budgets, 2) a change in who is the President, and/or 3) Federal court action and enforcement.

@Brachiator: But actual skills based immigrants are treated poorly. Its red herring this merit based immigration business. Just something to say to sound somewhat reasonable without actually meaning it. It is the new, we are only against illegal immigration.

ETA: Employment based greencard application process has become harder than ever before. T’s USCIS requires interviews now, the forms are longer and the long term visa renewals (H1-B, 0-1, J etc) while you wait for GC number to become available has become cumbersome too.

@trollhattan: I would love to see one of these super-heavy launchers used to send a decent mission to Uranus or Neptune. Nobody’s been to either planet since Voyager 2, and that was such a brief glimpse.

@Matt McIrvin:
Agree completely, planetary exploration has just begun and hopefully, once NASA is in sane hands and with a budget we can pick up where we left off. (Three more years, three more years….)

@🌎 🇺🇸 Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) 🗳 🌷: Apollo launches were ridiculously expensive, the concept of the shuttle was a good idea, but was screwed up in design and implementation(design by committee). And the orbiters are really cool looking.

The inspiration for Trump’s push is last year’s Bastille Day celebration in Paris, which the president attended as a guest of French President Emmanuel Macron. Trump was awestruck by the tableau of uniformed French troops marching down Avenue des Champs-Elysees with military tanks, armored vehicles, gun trucks and carriers — complete with F-16 fighter jets flying over the Arc de Triomphe and painting the sky with streaks of blue, white and red smoke for the colors of the French flag.

Its red herring this merit based immigration business. Just something to say to sound somewhat reasonable without actually meaning it. It is the new, we are only against illegal immigration.

Actually, it is a way to skew the immigration process in favor of white people and to find ways to exclude nonwhite people.

ETA: Employment based greencard application process has become harder than ever before. T’s USCIS requires interviews now, the forms are longer and the long term visa renewals (H1-B, 0-1, J etc) while you wait for GC number to become available has become cumbersome too.

I haven’t seen much about the Trump administration trying to hire more people and streamline procedures related to immigration. Just stuff about “vetting” and enforcement.

One of my first politically aware moments was listening to some conservative talker that dad had on some cassette. He was advocating the Privatization of Space, using the US Federal Government as a guarantor of market. Musing that if someone wouldn’t give you a payload for x-pounds per low-earth orbit, etc. ; then the government would guarantee a payload. If they said a given entrepreneur could not, and they went ahead anyway, the entrepreneur could launch water or even sand and the governement would have to pay them.

I did not realize at the time, that (i later believed) that the person was likely advocating for the dissolution of the NASA budget and programs.

I wonder what opportunity might have been lost, had ego not suggested a payload (of the Tesla car), but rather offered a global opportunity for scientists to create and deliver instrumentation and sensors that could assist in the continuing evaluation and analyzation of Mars.

That said, it was a big risk, and wow, that was something to see for a private sector accomplishment. Impressive to see as a matter of engineering, period — but that it was mounted privately, wow.

What a time to be alive, eh?

Peace to us all, if we make it through now, the stars will eventually beckon us.

$100,000 taken from a safe. Garbage bags full of stolen prescription drugs dumped on the black market. A motorist robbed of $25,000. The crimes were not carried out by normal criminals, but by Baltimore police officers.

@Adam L Silverman: Normally, I’d agree with that. I remember Goodlatte sitting on the bi-partisan Senate bill (maybe on the direction of Boehner, maybe not). But if Schumer and McConnell can ram through a 2 year budget deal through the Senate and the House, that’s going to make a lot of the Teabaggers upset (since they love being able to claim that they’re stopping government from doing anything). Once that happens, assuming it does happen, and the pressure of the (supposed) impending DACA deadline of March 5 appears in the headlights, and the supposed 70% of Americans who support the Dreamers, etc., etc., then it’s not impossible for Goodlatte and the rest of the troglodytes to be worked around. (“You’ve held things up long enough – we’re going around you, even if we need Democratic votes…”)

IOW, when the levee breaks, they got no place to stay.

Don’t forget there was a DACA/”border security” deal until Miller and Kelly blew it up. If Trump wants a deal badly enough, he will go around them and sign what’s presented. And if the House feels enough pressure, the people in the way will be routed around as well (they can always make up stuff to counter the inevitable “amnesty” boogieman – they’re really good at making stuff up.).

Trump is getting weaker by the day, and the GOP in Congress knows it. The ones sticking around want to be re-elected and they know that gerrymandering (and simply winning the primary) and incumbency isn’t an impregnable wall to save them this time.

Will the levee break after the budget deal, if there’s a budget deal? Dunno. We’ll see.

Cheers,
Scott.
(“Who doesn’t expect there will be an immigration deal, but who think’s it’s possible.”)

@Corner Stone: Obama was not keen on funding interplanetary exploration. It was a perpetual sore spot with the Planetary Society and such. He came in, like just about every President, wanting to have some massive lavish human spaceflight program like landing people on Mars, and like just about every President he got hit with the sticker shock and canned any concrete plans. Trump’s first White House budget proposal was actually way more generous for Solar System exploration than Obama ever was.

NASA got a fair bit of funding for Earth science, though, and of course Trump is slashing all of that, because it’s evil Obama Al Gore treehugger stuff. I just heard somebody say he’d proposed abolishing NASA and rolling space exploration into the Air Force just so he could avoid funding any Earth science missions at all.

If you don’t think money matters, you’re wrong. We may have the advantage in enthusiasm, but Republicans will try to buy a ground game to match it.

The Cook Political Report has said that “A wave is a comin.” And FiveThirtyEight argues “The Democrats’ Wave Could Turn Into A Flood.” In just over nine months, we’ll know whether Paul Ryan is still Speaker of the House and President Trump still has control of Congress.

In January 2010, President Obama had a positive approval rating (49% to 46.7%), and even he got shellacked in his first midterms. By contrast, Trump is under waterby more than 11 points.

Democrats have a record number of compelling candidates, with veterans and women leading the charge. And according to Real Clear Politics, Democrats hold nearly a 7-point lead in the average generic congressional ballot.

Surf’s up for the Democrats. Everything’s set for us to ride this wave to victory. Right?

I’m not so sure. I stay up almost every night worrying not just that the wave won’t be there, but that we won’t be able to ride it even if it is.

When I started in politics, people obsessed that money was everything — the difference between winning and losing. It was the “mother’s milk” of politics. Now, the zeitgeist has flipped. Everyone either says money doesn’t matter or believes it will magically be there in the end. I’ve had countless Democratic strategists and candidates tell me not to worry.

Guess what? They’re wrong.

Money won’t determine the fundamentals of the cycle. It won’t transform an overwhelming loss into an overwhelming win. You can’t buy a wave.

But it can make a difference — a big one. In a cycle like this, I believe it’s the difference that could either end Republican control of the House on a close night, or limit our gains if the wind is really at our backs.

My night tremors got worse when the Koch network announced recently that it’s committing $400 million to preserve Republican control of Congress. Unlike most Democratic fundraising, the GOP is being rewarded by their donors for passing an agenda that helps their donors. The Trump Tax gives the Kochs as much as a billion-dollar tax break each year. Pay-to-play is contemptible, but effective: that one donor is the equivalent of nearly 15 million Bernie-Sanders-style $27 contributions.

Actually, it is a way to skew the immigration process in favor of white people and to find ways to exclude nonwhite people.

That may be their intent but the top 5 countries getting the EB Green cards (Employment based which in the new lingo is the “skills based” GC)
are India, China, Mexico and Philippines, forget the fifth one.
I know BJers mean well but this assumption that white ==skilled is pretty insulting.
Having lighter skin is a not a skill.

So Shitstain is going to insist on a military parade complete with big hardware in DC. And calling Dems treasonous, which the spokesman for the admin says was a joke, is now an ad run by Shitstain’s reelection pac. Seems we are galloping towards autocracy now. Going for a walk in the forest to regain my equilibrium and lower my blood pressure. I don’t recognize my country or my countrymen anymore.

@But her emails!!:
I’d argue that it’s likely going to happen, no matter how much money the Koch Brothers and others spend. Money doesn’t necessarily buy votes. The GOP and Trump are doomed. Mid-term elections are nearly always unkind towards the President’s party. That’s historically true. If the Republicans remain in power, then we’ll know the system can’t be trusted and the Repubs will have to be removed by other means. That will be their fault.

Still, the official said Trump is determined to have a parade. “The president wants to do something that highlights the service and sacrifice of the military and have a unifying moment for the country,” the official said.

Some stupid military parade is not going to unify the country. It will be as divisive and polarizing as anything else this administration has done. It will only add more gasoline onto the flames that he’s an authoritarian, especially after that whole “Dems are traitors for not clapping for me” bit. Trump is in for a rude awakening. Good. I want him to be eternally miserable.

When my 9 year old son sat in the movie theater SHOOK seeing a black superhero on a big screen. And the emotion I feel as a life long superhero fan seeing the same thing at the same👏🏽damn👏🏽time👏🏽👏🏽#WhatBlackPantherMeansToMe

#WhatBlackPantherMeansToMe That I have lived long enough to see little black girls – dark skinned, natural hair, even bald– have these POWERFUL African women who are strong, beautiful & brilliant (in STEM at that) to look up to & buy toys & merch for. See themselves in 🙌🏾

@Baud:
I would hope so too since military officials want to tie it to Veteran’s Day:

Trump officials had discussed Memorial Day on May 28, and July 4, but the Pentagon prefers Veterans Day on Nov. 11 — in part because it would coincide with 100th anniversary of the victorious end of World War I and therefore be less associated with the president and politics. “That’s what everyone is hoping,” said the military official.

It is unclear what role Trump would play, whether he may perhaps serve as a grand marshal or observe the spectacle from a reviewing stand.

The location is still being discussed, though Trump has said that he would like it to proceed along Pennsylvania Avenue, which links the Capitol and the White House. It would be the same route as Trump’s inaugural parade and pass by his family’s showpiece: Trump International Hotel.

Additionally, DC officials (city I’m assuming) haven’t been contacted about this. I’m hoping this will be stuck in committee forever.

$100,000 taken from a safe. Garbage bags full of stolen prescription drugs dumped on the black market. A motorist robbed of $25,000. The crimes were not carried out by normal criminals, but by Baltimore police officers.

Can you imagine being a little brown child and seeing Black Panther, only to find out that the creators look like you? That the director has the thickest Oakland accent ever? That the production was filled with black people? #WhatBlackPantherMeansToMe

@Adam L Silverman: this is so asinine on so many levels, but what is so fucking infuriating about this to me is the level of vetting that refugees ALREADY go thru’. “Extreme vetting” already *exists*, damn it! This is just one more jacked-up card in that shameful xenophobic pack that Trump deals out: the wall, birtherism, ICE raids.

@🌎 🇺🇸 Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) 🗳 🌷: part of me is really curious about the title trump would like to see announced as this parade begins, and the uniform he’s probably been designing in his head when Fox And Friends talks about things that aren’t him

I know BJers mean well but this assumption that white ==skilled is pretty insulting.
Having lighter skin is a not a skill.

I think that we are really on the same page here, but let me spell it out for everyone’s sake.

Trump, Miller and company are racists. There are two prongs to their immigration agenda. One is the “merit” nonsense. They believe that white people are superior to nonwhite people, and also that nonwhites are a cultural threat, and will swamp America with their ineluctable nonwhite values if allowed to become the majority. Nonwhites are shithole people from shithole countries. White people are fabulous.

Trump and his people presume that nonwhite people will not measure up. But they will also try to back this up with explicit exclusions of non-white people to make sure that they get the results that they want.

The only insult is coming from Trump and his ilk. This has been clear since the beginning of his run for the presidency, and his open flirtation with European nationalists, the Klan, the VDARE crowd and other vermin. And of course it was foundational in his birtherism.

I am not sure what you are basing this on. Trump is not rolling up victory and victory, but he got his tax cuts, he is getting judges and other nominees in place (with a few failing to pass muster), and still has idiots in almost all cabinet posts. The GOP is still solidly behind him. Even conservative pundits wring their hands, but still stay mainly in the Trump camp.

People hate his guts and the Dems have largely been crushing Republicans in speical elections. The GOP sticks by him at their peril.

The Koch Brothers recently announced that they were just warming up, looking forward to unleashing a wad of cash to spend on the mid terms. This of course makes the GOP leadership feel warm and happy. This may also make them over-confident, but even less likely to see any risk in standing by their man.

The mid-terms will be an interesting test of Trump’s supposed strengths.

@Corner Stone: I was referencing Brachiator’s assumption that “skilled” immigration will automatically favor white immigrants.
He explained in a later comment that he expects Miller and company to rig the formula.

1) He still doesn’t have his Muslim ban
2) He still doesn’t have his Wall
3) He still hasn’t repealed Obamacare
4) He still doesn’t have a Budget to pay for his policy proposals
5) He still doesn’t have a Debt Ceiling
6) He still doesn’t have an Infrastructure Bill
7) Polls still show the possibility/probability of a Blue Wave in November
8) Record numbers of Democratic candidates are running.
9) Record (maybe?) numbers of Republicans are retiring from the House
10) Mueller’s still investigating his associates and getting closer to Himself
11) The Ever Upward stock market under Trump has been shown to be an illusion
12) His specific promises about protecting manufacturing jobs in the midwest have been shown to be lies
13) The Courts continue to throw roadblocks up against his “executive actions”
14) US auto production is falling from the 2015-2016 peak, indicating weakness in that very important sector of the economy

and so forth.

Every day Trump gets weaker. Will he end up being weak enough to be removed from office before January 2021? Dunno. But he’s getting less and less able to implement his agenda.

The narrative as I remember it:
Saturn was a do-it-now spend-what-it-takes design. It got us to the moon first.
NASA went to Congress and said “We need to develop a next-generation heavy launch capability to replace Saturn, and here’s the plan and the budget it will take.
Congress (especially Rs) recoiled in horror, said “Nothing like that budget is going to happen. Tell us a story with much smaller yearly outlays”
NASA said “We can do this ugly kludge by strapping a bunch of stuff together, and use it for a manned LEO stopgap while we work on the real thing on a greatly reduced budget and greatly extended timetable. The kludge won’t go very high (nothing like geosynchronous) but yearly program costs are fairly low. We can sell it as the space bus, make frequent flights because the shuttle part is re-usable, and because the other parts are much less expensive than a Saturn. ”
Congress said “Do it.”
NASA said “Here’s the plan for the real thing, the next generation of heavy launch. Can we have the funding you promised?”
Congress said “Here’s something less”
Next year Congress said “We don’t want to fund your next gen heavy lift program. Why can’t we use the shuttle indefinitely?”
Next year Congress said “Budget deficits! We’re trimming the NASA budget. Do more with less.”
etc.

@Manyakitty: You don’t so much need a gigantic launcher to get to Venus; the hard challenge there if you want anything that actually explores the surface is just designing a probe that will survive there. The Soviets got pretty good at it, as far as it went–all the pictures anyone has from the surface of Venus are theirs–but none of their landers were even intended to survive more than a couple of hours on the surface.

@Corner Stone:
Warren Buffett is a Democrat. He has called for raising taxes on rich people like himself, and he has highlighted that his personal secretary, whose income is mostly salary, pays a higher income tax rate than he, whose income is all from investments.

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